The Trump Administration “Cheated” Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski out of a Deal

It’s hard out there for a dupe. From the Anchorage Daily News:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she feels “cheated” after she won a concession in the recently passed tax and spending law to protect wind and solar projects, only to see the president and his administration issue recent orders that she said seem designed to quickly quash such projects. “I feel cheated,” she said in an interview Friday. “I feel like we made a deal and then hours later, a deal was made to somebody else.”

Wait. You mean the president—this president—acted in bad faith to get something he wanted? Glorioski, senator, what were the odds?

Murkowski said there were plenty of wins for Alaska in the megabill signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4. Those include a new royalty sharing mechanism that in eight years is meant to start giving Alaska lots of revenue from oil production on federal lands.

Given that, in eight years, there’s no guarantee that whatever administration is in office may not share this administration’s enthusiasm for global environmental spoilage, a deal with this administration may mean exactly squat. However, the ill effects of the Big Plug Ugly for which Murkowski voted will hit people long before that.

I have come to doubt Senator Murkowski’s skill at the art of the deal. Now, all of this analysis depends vitally on the sincerity of Murkowski’s regrets. It is still a live possibility that she is simply declaring herself a sap to defend her own cowardice and duplicity in casting a critical vote in favor of that nightmare POS. Anything is possible.